Thursday 23 April 2009

Yes Man (2008)

Yes Man is a story about a guy called Carl (Jim Carrey), who lives a pretty boring life as a junior loan officer at a local bank, has some friends, but prefers staying home watching movies rather than hanging out with them and is still saddened about the fact that he and his wife Stephanie (Molly Sims) divorced three years earlier. His friends are furious at him and especially his best buddy Peter (Bradley Cooper) is quite frustrated with his way to neglet his friends and always making excuses not to meet with him.

Then one day a guy from his past (John Michael Higgins) shows up and gives his a leaflet about a special personal development program and invites him to join them to their next meeting. Carl hesitates and is about to say no, but somehow finds himself at the meeting and suddenly for his own suprise becomes a new covenant for the program that emphasizes the power of saying yes to every opportunity that comes to your way. He soon finds himself being the typical Yes man, saying yes to flying lessons, saying yes to learn korean and even saying yes to the most unexpected loan applications he would never had approved before all this.

But no matter how ridiculous this all may sound, he actually realizes that his life is on its way to a new direction. His career starts to blossom, he has a new, fresh lovelife with a young woman called Allison (Zooey Deshanel) and things seem to be just great. But of course there is a downside to all this craziness and he eventually understands that his life is not only about saying yes, but there is a limit to everything and maybe saying yes to all the opportunities is not the answer to his problems.

This movie really is one crazy comedy and at some point you may face the fact that you either love it or hate it. Jim Carrey sure hasn't changed a bit as an actor and literally flies through the movie with his passionately entertaining and colorful wings giving some pretty darn good scenes to watch. But he surely can be a bit annoying at times and may divide the audience with his overactive character. He has a very strong presence and his charisma is just something else, but is it sometimes too much to handle? He is usually all over the place making faces, overacting and may get the audience to hyperventilate at times.

At first I really didn't know if I liked or hated this movie. But as the movie progressed I had to admit that Carrey is such a goof-ball that I cannot resist but like him, at least a little bit. At times I just laughed tears in my eyes, since some of the scenes were just so over the line. Entertaining comedy to cheer you up on a rainy, grey day.



Directed by Peyton Reed
Written by Danny Wallace (book), Nicholas Stoller, Jarrad Paul and
Andrew Mogel (screenplay)
Cast Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, John Michael Higgins, Molly Sims

2 comments:

Helinä Laajalahti said...

I saw this movie on a flight to New York and must admit for that occasion it was fun entertainment ;-) But during a boring flight you might want to see literally *anything* ;-)

I agree that the craziness of this movie made me laugh a few times and the positive message of the movie was not that bad. I think eventually we all could benefit a bit of craziness, sometimes saying yes to opportunities instead of no. At least I find myself saying no way too often...

Sari said...

Yes, on a boring flight across the Atlantic almost anything goes... ;-)

I think the craziness was the thing that saved this movie and the message is something to think about. Maybe we could try to be yes women, even for a day, or just a couple of hours. For a year, no way!